Crusader Kings III
by Paradox Development Studio · 1 Sep, 2020
1,062 downloads
About the Game
Your legacy awaits. Choose your noble house and lead your dynasty to greatness in a Middle Ages epic that spans generations. War is but one of many tools to establish your reign, as real strategy requires expert diplomatic skill, mastery of your realm, and true cunning. Crusader Kings III continues the popular series made by Paradox Development Studio, featuring the widely acclaimed marriage of immersive grand strategy and deep, dramatic medieval roleplaying.
Take command of your house and expand your dynasty through a meticulously researched Middle Ages. Begin in 867 or 1066 and claim lands, titles, and vassals to secure a realm worthy of your royal blood. Your death is only a footnote as your lineage continues with new playable heirs, either planned… or not.
Discover a sprawling simulated world teeming with peasants and knights, courtiers, spies, knaves and jesters, and secret love affairs. An extensive cast of historical characters can be romanced, betrayed, executed, or subtly influenced.
Explore a vast medieval map stretching from the snowswept Nordic lands to the Horn of Africa, and the British Isles in the west to the exotic riches of Burma in the east. Claim, conquer, and rule thousands of unique counties, duchies, kingdoms, and empires.
Each character is larger than life, with traits and lifestyle choices determining their actions and schemes. Prompt fear and dread as you rule with an iron fist, or inspire your subjects with magnanimous deeds. Genetics can be passed along to your children, be it the gift of genius or crippling stupidity.
Groom your heir with the appropriate guardians or educate them yourself. If found wanting, marry them off or despatch them through other means.
Customize your ruler and noble house, from appearance to attributes, and create a monarch worthy of all their inherited virtues and vices.
Govern an ever-evolving realm and grant titles to whom you see fit - or usurp your liege to claim their crown as your own. Be wary of rivals, from restless serfs to revengeful concubines.
The shadows stir frequently, and danger lurks around every darkened corner. Recruit agents and other unsavory elements to undermine, blackmail, or murder those who stand in your path. Or be inspired by the bard and ballad, and seduce your way to power and influence.
Blood will flow. Assemble men-at-arms units and powerful knights. Manage your battlefield tactics and armies. Raid and plunder nearby lands or hire mercenaries and Holy Orders for your major conflicts.
Be a pious king to invite the religious powers to your side, or design your own faith as you battle between everlasting fame or eternal damnation.
Bring novel innovations to your culture and construct mighty castles and bastions to increase the wealth, prestige, and security of your realm.
The paths to follow are limitless: experience thousands of dynamic events and life-altering decisions tailored to each and every conceivable situation and character. There are countless ways of securing and keeping your place in the history books.
Screenshots
14 images
Version Information
Steam Patch Notes
Official update history
Hello everyone! We have a small update today to address some issues reported to us by the community. Check the changelog below for more information.
Update 1.19.0.6 Changelog
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue preventing players from manually inviting agents to schemes
Fixed an issue causing epidemics and natural disasters to be less lethal than intended
Hello everyone! We’re releasing a small bugfix update today to address some outstanding issues since the release of 1.19 “Scribe.” Check the changelog below for more information!
Update 1.19.0.5 Changelog
Bugfixes
Fixed an issue where the Legendary Hunt Story Cycle would not start despite starting a legendary hunt.
The Iberian Dominance ending can no longer be repeated infinitely for unlimited renown.
purchase_land_interaction now only allows duchy targets when the seller completely controls that duchy.
Custom title names are no longer reset to default in Title History after a ruler’s death.
AI characters can now upgrade their knight accolades.
Rites of Passage no longer refunds gold or prestige when cancelled.
Fixed an issue preventing “The Song of El Cid” Story Cycle from being finished.
Administrative rulers from the Renewed Caliphate ending now correctly get the Subjugation CB.
Characters at their concubine limit can now offer concubines to other characters.
Fixed an issue where the side buttons in the Character Panel wouldn't display correctly after loading a multiplayer save.
Japan now shows the correct title and government type when selecting a starting character.
Characters in a travel entourage now reset to their original location if their travel plan is cancelled.
Your infidelity will no longer be broadcasted to everyone as it happens. It’s the Middle Ages, not a Coldplay concert.
Note: Pregnancies that began in 1.19.0.4 will still trigger this!
Fixed bug where using the "Purchase Land" interaction as Landless would not distribute the land properly to the purchaser
Hello everyone! We're pushing a small hotfix update today to tackle some outstanding issues with the 1.19 "Scribe" Update that was released on Monday. Check the changelog below for more information.
Update 1.19.0.4 Changelog
Fixed an issue causing out-of-sync errors in cross-platform multiplayer.
Fixed an issue causing certain trait-related events (such as Lunatic and Depressed) to fire too frequently.
Resolved an issue with some High Medieval Attire clothing not displaying correctly when using the color picker.
Fixed a typo in the Sword of Japan Steam achievement description.
Fixed an issue where UI elements could go out of bounds in the Story Cycle panel.
The Court Visuals UI panel is now fixed in place and can no longer be moved.
Minor French localization fixes.
Hello everyone! We're pushing a quick update to the open beta branch of our upcoming 1.19 "Scribe" Update. This update focuses primarily on addressing issues reported to us by the community since the open beta began on Friday.
If you'd like to opt into the beta and see what's coming in 1.19 yourself, you can do so via the open_beta branch on Steam.
As always, this is a beta, so some features and values may still be adjusted before release.
Cheers!
1.19 "Scribe" Open Beta Update 1 Changelog
Interface
Fixed issue where Alert buttons could display over the View Succession window
Fixed issue where “Show All Armies” window did not close after selecting a single army
Fixed bug where opening the “Plagues” window through the 'P' hotkey when another tab is opened, kept the other tab highlighted as if opened
Fixed issue where interaction menu header would stick out of the window for characters outside diplomatic range
Fixed issue where language-icon would shift slightly when on-hover character buttons appear
Fixed issue where Faith name in the county view could shift left
Repositioned tooltip of 'More' button so it doesn't obscure the first item of the list
Fixed bugs related to sorting of characters in the ledger
Fixed bug where Fanatic Accolade Attribute were not visible on the available attributes list unless the Character was a Courtier
Moved children in “birth.1003” event to the right to better fit the mother's nameplate
Fixed bug where Battle Summary-window would not display tabs for seeing Knights statistics
Fixed bug where hovering over certain bookmark elements would cause the bookmark character to shake uncontrollably
Multiplayer
Fixed a Multiplayer Out of Sync related to SNotableCasualty::_Name not being CUnsyncedString
Art
Reweighted specific Korean and Chinese portrait modifiers
Fixed issue where textures displaying Coat of Arms would render as black
Fixed cloth pattern error related to attire from “High Medieval Warfare” Creator Pack
Fixed missing Celestial Court Attire headgears
Audio
Fixed the default CK3 soundtrack not playing if you owned All Under Heaven
Balance
Added parameter to Cultivation Culture Tradition that reduces the chances of getting new elder traits by 50%
Modifier is applied before genetics and lifestyle modifiers affecting the chance
Localization
Fixed issue where the legends creation window would crash if you open it in any other language than English
Fixed bug where the “A Place At Court” event would show broken text and use the wrong effect to appoint the character
Adjusted the text for “tgp_japan_general.9551” (event from winning the eradicate cb) to find the de_jure_empire of the eradicated person and mention it dynamically
Fixed bug where hovering over certain bookmark elements would cause the bookmark character to shake uncontrollably
Updated Localization in non-english languages
Bugfixes
Fixed being able to legitimize yourself if you are a bastard house or dynasty head
Expanded the use of “allow_accolade” for East-Asian Governments
Fixed errors from events when Holding Court
Disabled event previews for the oath event
Made event previews scrollable in big events
Fixed issue where Ledger soldier count would only take personal army size into account and not include all the vassal contributions
Increased size of PatternColorOverrides to 64 instead of 16 to match the size of SCourtSceneCharacterConstants::_PatternColorOverrides
Fixed a wrong scope in barony_is_valid_for_holy_order_lease_cancellation_trigger pointing towards a character instead of the barony
Fixed Chinese Consolidation War sometimes invalidating immediately after declaring it
Restored the max_regiments limit on all MaA types unlocked from Accolades back to 1
Update 1.18.1.1 Changelog
Bugfixes
- Fixed a crash that may happen when opening the Royal Court in 1178.
- Fixed a crash that could happen when opening the Situations window.
- Southeast Asian commoners now know about belts, allowing them to keep their pants on.
- Fixed the lvl 2 and 3 Determination Aspect having the wrong parameter set, preventing Watch-houses from being built if you leveled up your aspect.
- Fixed lvl 4+ Paddy Fields having the wrong upgrade requirements.
- Han now starts with innovation_arched_saddle in 867 so they can recruit Heavy Cavalry (which they historically had access to).
- Reduced the strength of Shenbigong crossbowmen somewhat.
- Reverted some changes to Men-at-Arms stats.
- Removed a faulty treasury modifier from the Heirloom Seal and replaced it with domain tax and a capital development bonus.
- The Japanese throne room will no longer appear outside Japan/for non-Japanese cultures.
- Great Liao now starts with a large army, making them able to rival Song in 1066.
- Shatuo culture now has the Iron Cavalry tradition.
Hello everyone! We’re releasing a hotfix today to address some pressing issues reported to us by the community since the release of All Under Heaven last week. Please check the changelog below for more information!
Update 1.18.0.2 Changelog
Bugfixes
Fixed a crash that could happen if the player was part of an invalid situation participant group.
Fixed a crash that could happen if adaptive framerate was enabled and the game was paused by an event.
Fixed the Buy Claim interaction not costing any Piety when targeting a hegemony tier title.
Fixed the Buy Claim interaction being unlocked for everyone, regardless of government when picking the "Sanctioned Loopholes" Lifestyle Perk. Governments with Merit, as well as Japanese governments, no longer have access to it, as intended.
When playing as a Governor in a realm with Merit, courtiers will now move to your new location when you gain or lose a title. If a courtier gets 'lost' in a location they should not be in, they'll return within a year.
Independent celestial rulers can now host exams. This means for instance that local exams can be held during the division era.
Added missing effects for actually handing over the contested titles to the attacker after winning a Seize Hegemonic Duchy war.
The Hegemon can now reject tributary missions in the event where they come bearing tribute. This allows you to not get tributaries sworn to you that you do not want (for example if you’d rather attack them).
Aligned the requirements for Acknowledge Hegemon and the Tribute Mission decisions (Kowtow to —, Pay Tribute etc.).
Acknowledge Hegemon should now be aligned with actually being able to go on a tribute mission to the Hegemon in question.
Fixed so that the Seal of Investiture can be properly gifted by the Huangdi, and so that it is the Huangdi that decides, rather than the Tributary themselves.
Male and female Chinese Hegemons are now called Huángdì, their female consorts Húanghòu, and male consorts Húangfū.
Made it so that newly invited members to a Japanese House Bloc cannot leave it before 10 years have passed.
Fixed most holy site bonuses for the Mu faith being the same.
Removed the potential for new Chinese realms in the vicinity of k_guannei to obtain the dynastic name of Qi, which it is not part of.
Removed the potential for new Chinese realms in the vicinity of k_huainan to obtain the dynastic name of Shu, which it is not part of.
Fixed a loophole causing dynastically named Chinese realms to retain their names even when absorbed by other realms and ensured that you retain your existing dynastic name - if you have one - when taking over China.
Fixed an incorrect trigger in the ability to recruit Zhanmadao Infantry.
Oath buildings can now be built in Temple Citadels.
The Seize Mandate of Heaven casus belli will now run the same effect as the “Claim Mandate of Heaven” decision if the attacker wins, turning their realm into a proper Celestial one.
Allowed the Emperor of China to use the Consolidation casus belli on all de jure Kingdoms in Empires: Zhongyuan, Jingyang, Lingnan, Liangyi and Yongliang (with the exception of Kingdoms: Xia, Hexi, Dali and Viet) regardless of the Cycle Era.
Claiming the Mandate of Heaven will trigger the Conquest Era only if the claimant is of a different dynasty and have either non-Chinese culture heritage or non-Celestial Government.
Reclaiming the Mandate of Heaven will now automatically vassalize independent realms inside the Dynastic Cycle region if they have the same cultural heritage, celestial government, or same dynasty.
Fixed the maximum cap for regular buildings in a barony being set one too low (max of 5 instead of 6).
Custom Title names gained from renaming should now be correctly displayed.
Celestial independent rulers may now fund disaster relief without a minister to fund them.
Reduced low FPS/stuttering in specific map regions (Angkor for example) caused by an excessive amount of expensive jungle trees.
Optimized jungle tree map assets to reduce stuttering.
Duke tier player Celestial rulers can now tweak the Province obligation type of Counts underneath them (AI already could).
We no longer show warning messages when loading saves with only a ‘build’ version difference (1.18.0.1 to 1.18.0.2 = no warning).
Game Content
Added a decision 'Command Family to take Exams', available to House Heads, which makes unlanded family members independently go to local exams (if they need to pass the local exam) and Capital Exams (if they need to pass the Metropolitan or Palace exam) without the need for you to take them there. As long as they are within your realm, they will create their own travels, and you will be notified via Feed Message if they pass (this already existed).
Game Balance
Removed the MAA Maintenance, MAA Recruitment Costs, and Army maintenance penalties imposed by the Dynastic Cycle on the Huangdi; the Celestial government already had increased maintenance from the Treasury defines and didn't need more. This should make China more resistant to going bankrupt during revolts.
The Grand Marshal has their MAA hiring and maintenance costs reduced, to compensate for not being able to station troops, and to make sure they can get an army that can exceed Kingdom-tier armies in strength.
Removed some excessive men_at_arms_cap modifiers from the Celestial government, as this is handled through the Army Command Structure laws instead.
Increased the toughness of Tiefutu cavalry.
Decreased the attack of Tiefutu cavalry.
Reduced the costs for Zhanmadao Infantry.
The Meritocratic Khanate and Meritocratic governments now have the same bonus to Vassal Limit as Celestial (100 -> 20), as they are historically supposed to be modeled after Celestial.
Added merit and passed exams modifiers to all Celestial vassals after taking the Claim the Mandate of Heaven decision. This should make it so that negative catalysts should trigger less often at the start of a new Dynasty’s reign.
The Grand Campaign war will no longer result in tributaries, instead it will always give contested titles directly to the Hegemon.
When there are way too few entrants with a martial education passing the examinations, we lower the barrier a bit to allow at least a few characters to succeed in the examinations. This will ensure that we continuously add more characters to the pool of available military candidates over time.
Databases
Made various corrections and improvements to the traits, stats, and familial relationships of various historical Chinese characters.
Reshuffled the arrangement of title holders in k_kuizhou to ensure that the new capital is held by the governor on game start.
Zhu Xi and family members changed to the Daoxue faith, in line with community feedback.
Corrected a misrepresentation of Yan Shu's gender.
Changed the faith of Wang Chuyi to Quanzhen.
Changed the de jure capital of k_kuizhou to c_kuizhou.
Renamed Mu Mount Seorak holy site to Mount Geumgang.
As always, if you encounter any issues after today’s update, please submit a bug report via the Community Support board here on Steam or via the bug report board on our official forums.
We hope this update improves your experience in All Under Heaven and the associated 1.18 “Crane” Update!
Hello everyone! We're releasing a quick update today to address some issues reported to us since the release of 1.18.0 on Tuesday. We are currently working on a more substantial update to address more outstanding issues, but we believe it is important to push fixes for these particular issues as soon as possible. We're also aware of an issue regarding renaming titles in the current live version of the game. We have a fix for this problem, which will be deployed in an update coming next week.
Update 1.18.0.1 Changelog
Bugfixes
Corrected the Song dynasty ruler in 1178 and fixed various genealogical irregularities in the ruling Zhao dynasty's ancestry.
Fixed the flavorization of Korean rulers defaulting to inappropriate fallbacks.
Temple Citadel Holdings can now be upgraded by non-Mandala rulers.
Fixed some Korean heritages not being able to use the “Unite the Husamgeuk” decision.
Fixed a rare startup crash relating to story cycles.
Made the default candidates of the Meritocratic Regent Succession the same as for the Japanese Regency succession form, this makes the close family of the top ruler valid candidates.
Fixed a game over caused by combining the Game Rule “Player Administrative Realms - Always” with playing the Japanese Ten'no.
Fixed Shi Miyuan having the wrong gender.
The Byzantine emperor will no longer stand holding a Hu in one of the budget events.
Fixed a crash that happened on the conclusion screen of an activity if it was being kept open fairly long.
Fixed a crash that can happen if you opened both the catalyst and participation windows of different sub-regions in the Silk Road situation window.
Game Balance
Balanced Duke-tier income a bit down in bureaucratic governments (Admin/Celestial/Meritocratic), and Kingdom-tier a bit up, so it’s (almost) always a good upgrade.
When an Escalated Peasant Faction resolves, the involved Counties will no longer immediately form another one and the peasants will stay pacified for a while.
Tweaked/added modifiers for having an existing Escalated faction, so that the Counties don't flip-flop between that faction and Populist faction, and to no longer create the faction and disband it immediately.
Added a catalyst for the Dynastic Cycle to force Emperors who hold less than 30% of the de-jure Hegemony into the Division Era, similar to losing the Mandate of Heaven (it is better for China to reform stronger, rather than to persist as a small scattered realm).
Made the Dynastic Cycle ticking catalyst for holding less than 50% of China a bit stronger.
Made AI rulers less likely to use the Hegemonic Consolidation CB, if they are not involved in the Dynastic Cycle situation, or culturally related to the Dynastic Cycle. If they have an aggressive AI archetype or are a conqueror, they have a higher chance.
Hi everyone,
My name is Riad, and I’m the QA Manager for PDS Black, the studio working on Crusader Kings III. You might know me as the guy who wrote a dev diary about Black Forge Jam. I want to speak to you directly and honestly. First of all. I am not a PR guy, and I don’t have an elite team of ghostwriters who can craft a response for me. I work at Paradox, and I am someone who cares deeply about this game and this community.
I want to take the proper time to say something that’s been on my mind all day, and led me to ask for approval by my higher-ups to make this post:
I’m sorry.
“Coronations” was not up to the standard you deserve, and that’s on me. As the QA Manager for the studio, it is my job to ensure that our releases meet the QA vision we have set out. It is clear we didn’t give the project the resources and attention it needed, and the result was a release that let you down. You have every right to be upset, and I want to acknowledge that openly.
To give some context, not as an excuse, but as a bit of background, our team has been pouring enormous effort into “All Under Heaven”. It’s the biggest expansion we’ve ever attempted, and making sure it’s both fun and stable has demanded most of our experienced developers, and basically every resource we have in the studio to be committed towards that release to ensure that things like tick speed performance is up to your expectations. Due to this, our other projects, such as “Coronations”, have had less resources dedicated to them. Though I am very proud of the development team, and really amazed with what they did with such limited resources, we didn't assign enough people to oversee the release and meet our quality demands, and that was clearly unfair to both them and you, our fans.
I don’t want this to happen again. As a studio, we’re taking a hard look at how we assign resources, and support our developers so that every release meets the expectations you rightfully have. For example, we will be more stringent about allowing last-minute changes to the game (which can cause issues like broken oaths). We will also ensure that we dedicate more time towards full-length playthroughs throughout the entire development cycle, to ensure that issues like these can’t slip through. This is about making sure the quality of every DLC lives up to the game that I, and many of you, love.
Many of us on the team, myself included, joined Paradox as fans of the games. Meeting you at events (most recently in Visby!), hearing your stories, and seeing how much Crusader Kings III means to you is what makes this work so meaningful. That’s why it hurts so much when we fuck up like this. We don’t take your trust for granted, and I want to do my best to ensure we earn it back.
In the meantime, we have done our best to address many of these issues you’ve experienced with yesterday’s release. Please let me know directly if there are any other issues that are breaking the game for you and I’ll do everything I can to make sure they’re included in upcoming patches. Additionally, we are planning at least one more patch for Coronations to fix many of the issues we encountered ahead of the release, but didn’t have enough time to fix.
Thank you for holding us accountable and for continuing to care about this game as much as we do. We will do better.
– Riad
1.17.0.1 Changelog
Bugfixes
Fixed the issue with always getting the Oathbreaker event, regardless of if you completed the oath or not
The buildings needed for the three "build special oath buildings" oaths have been changed from tier 3 to tier 2
The special oath buildings have had their costs and modifiers reduced across the board
The special oath buildings have had some of their triggers simplified, so they need fewer of their requirements than they used to
These oaths have also had the time you can do them increased from 10 years to 20 years
Specifically for the spiritual one, switched the requirements from tier 3 to 2, and vice versa
The Alliance oath has been changed from 5 alliances needed to 3
Building Oath (the generic one) has been reduced from 10 buildings to 8, and the time available to do it has been increased (from 15 years to 20)
Legendary Hunt has been changed from 3 to 1, and has had the time available increased (from 20 years to 40)
Fixed the Prepare Heir oath decision, so it checks for the proper scope in its requirements, and also removed the gold cost
Added two new modifiers for the AI, so if they choose a warlike oath, they will have an increased war chance, and similarly, if they have the peace oath, they will have a peace oath, which will decrease their war chance
Removed health bonuses and maluses from Prepare the Heir rewards
Added extra checks for the AI so they will try to take oaths that make sense
Fixed the End the Struggle oath, so it correctly tells you which struggle area it is targeting, and massively increased the time it is available to you (from 20 years to 50)
Increased the time available to do the Repent Oath from 10 years to 20 years
Fixed Anointment Doctrines and Anointment activity type being available to faiths with Temporal Head of Faith (these are for Spiritual HoF faiths only); temporal HoF faiths have guaranteed access to regular coronation instead
Fixed duplication bugs and self-crowning malus caused by temporal HoF being Coronation host
Blocked the building oaths for Nomads and Tribals
Current Release
21120590
Uploaded Mar 29, 2026
Update Required for Latest Version
The base game download is an older build.
To get the latest version, download both the Base Game + Update patch.
Crusader Kings III update 1.18.0 - 1.18.2.rar
459 MB
Additional Files
DLC Unlockers (Legit Owners)
1 file · For legitimate game owners
Update Patches
1 file · Only if your local version is older
System Requirements
How to Install
setup.exe
Troubleshooting tips
• Run Redist/_CommonRedist installers if game won't start
• Add folder to Windows Defender exclusions
• Run as administrator
Download
Direct link available
5.3 GB
21120590
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Download Crusader Kings III for PC with a direct link or via torrent. Get the full version of Crusader Kings III for free. Crusader Kings III is a RPG released by Paradox Development Studio.